After 15 years of presenting 14 plays in 48 hours for four weekends every year, the producers of 14/48 present two new styles of the popular speed theatre festival. On August 10 & 11, at 8:00 & 10:30pm, 14/48 will be at the Erickson Theatre at 1524 Harvard Avenue on Capitol Hill for the first 14/48 Kamikaze Festival. Tickets for the 14/48 Kamikaze are $20 advance and $25 day of show and are available at www.brownpapertickets.com.

After that weekend, 14/48 goes down Denny Way to the Seattle Center for its first outdoor festival. On September 7 & 8, at 8:00 & 10:30pm, 14/48 moves outdoors to the Peter F. Donnelly Gardens next to the Seattle Repertory Theatre as part of the Next Fifty Celebration at Seattle Center. The Outdoor 14/48 will be free of charge and open to the public.

The 14/48 Kamikaze format begins with a group of 45 14/48 veterans who have participated in past festivals as at least two of the five disciplines of acting, directing, writing, designing or playing in the band. On Thursday, August 9, the theme for Friday night’s show is randomly drawn, as usual, but then the artists commit themselves to pick out of a hat a card with one of these five words on it: Act; Direct; Write; Design or Band. Whichever card an artist draws, that artist will fulfill that duty to create 14 plays in 48 hours that weekend. When the last card is drawn, there will be 7 directors, 7 writers, 5 designers, 5 band members and 21 actors. After the Friday 8:00pm show, a new theme provided by the audience is randomly selected and becomes the theme for Saturday’s show. From this format comes 14 plays in 48 hours. “Over the years, we’ve had a number of talented artists say ‘thanks for inviting me to (blank) but I’ve always wanted to (blank2),’ says 14/48 co-founder Jodi-Paul Wooster. “To those brave folks I say: ‘Careful what you wish for.’”

The 14/48 Outdoor Festival on September 7 & 8 will offer the standard 14/48 format of 7 directors, 7 playwrights, 7 musicians and a group of actors and designers invited to create 7 new 10-minute plays based on a randomly selected theme on Friday night and then another new theme with 7 new plays on Saturday night. This will be a whole different group of artists than the 14/48 Kamikaze Festival. The 14/48 Outdoor venue will be the four levels of the Peter F. Donnelly Gardens on the eastern side of the Seattle Repertory Theatre. The late summer dates allow 14/48 to invite those actors who have proven themselves summer after summer at Seattle’s outdoor theatre festivals. “We can never rest on our laurels,” says Wooster. “Our audience and artists expect not only new plays but new ways of creating these plays.”

Here’s how 14/48 works:

Early Thursday Night, Before the Festival Begins: After tapping the ceremonial 14/48 Keg, all the participants choose a theme by completing this sentence: “Theatre would be a lot more interesting if there were seven ten-minute plays about _____.” One answer is chosen at random and that becomes the theme for the following evening. *On August 10 & 11, the artists choose their disciplines at random.

Thursday Night: Seven caffeine-filled writers have one night to write a 10-minute play based on the theme.

Friday Morning: Seven directors gather and each randomly draw one play. Thirty minutes later, the directors blindly choose actors and actresses’ names on slips of paper to cast the show.

That Day: The band shows up to provide music and sound, designers create all technical aspects of each show as the directors and their casts rehearse all day.

Friday at 8pm: The seven plays have their World Premiere. The audience provides the theme for Saturday’s show via a random drawing and the seven writers go home to start the process all over again to culminate with seven brand new scripts for Saturday evening at 8pm, thus creating 14 plays in 48 hours.

14/48 is 14 plays conceived, written, designed, scored, rehearsed and performed in 48 hours. Artistic participation is by invitation only and is predicated on the most rigorous professional standards.

Founded in 1997 by Michael Neff and Jodi-Paul Wooster, the festival has evolved from a one-night one-time only event to a twice-yearly, two-weekend-long theatrical bonanza dedicated to featuring Seattle’s most fearless theatre artists with occasional guests from Los Angeles, Vancouver BC and New York. Participation is by invitation only and ranges from experienced fringe theater artists to Seattle’s performance elite.